Introduction
Fade in from bloody red* You are on an operating table. A woman with a surgical mask is looking over you. She is talking into a recorder, making notes about "the procedure." The woman notices that you're coming to. "Can you understand what I'm saying?" she asks, excited. The window pop-up has a "yes," option, but when you click it you hear (yourself) moan like a monster. "I guess you won't be able to speak then. The procedure isn't perfect. But you can understand me? Grunt twice for yes." This time the pop-up has a "grunt" button. After the first click, you have the option to grunt again. If you wait without clicking it, she looks at you expectantly for a while. For some humor, if you decide to wait on pressing "grunt" again, there's some dialogue where she starts talking to her recorder about, "I guess the procedure didn't work, though the patient showed signs..." Eventually you click yes grunt again (the only option) and the scene continues. The woman explains that you've been a zombie for a long time. There's really no way of knowing how long. But the serum works! She was able to bring you back. She explains that you are still a zombie. You'll always be a zombie. You won't have to eat food or drink water ever again. Plus you can regenerate tissue. That's the good news. The bad news is the serum only lasts so long. You'll need more injections. The longer you go without serum, the more you'll revert to a zombie. In the meantime, other zombies are going to attack you. Somehow they sense when someone is on the serum and it drives them to attack. The woman (Lets call her... Dorothy) explains what's happened to the world. Apparently the Zombie outbreak has gone on for a long time. Humanity found a cure, and they were in the process of administering the cure. Millions of serum was produced. But something went wrong. The rescue workers must've been overtaken by the zombies. "If you see a zombie in a uniform with this logo, they were one of the rescue workers. They might still have serum on them." *hint hint*. Dorothy is not a zombie. She's a researcher from an underground bunker of survivors. She's been doing field work, trying to see if the process used by the rescue workers (long ago) can be recreated and humanity can be saved. The others in the bunker didn't believe it, and even if it could be done, it wasn't worth the risk. She left the bunker, knowing that she wouldn't be allowed in. Since then, she set up a small camp in the woods (the clearing you get to start the game). She's explaining that they're out of serum however. She had to use all of it to bring you back. And she'll need more, not just for you, but to continue her research. Maybe injections for the whole world won't be possible, but if she could find a different way to administer the serum.. The talk is interrupted by sounds around the encampment. It's being attacked by zombies. You grab a melee weapon and defend the encampment. You're successful and defeat the attack, but Dorothy gets bit during the fight. "My work doesn't end here," she says as she convulses into a zombie. She frantically ties herself to the tree. "Find serum. You may have to go to the city. Bring me back. Then we save the world. Got it?" "Ghrruauaa" you moan in agreement. Music swells. The camera pans up above the encampment, above the forest beyond, and the city can be seen in the background. The title appears over the landscape. You're off to your first quest. Once you've rescued her, she'll continue to be a quest-giver as she works on a way to deliver the serum to the world. She'll "live" at your base camp, as will any other plot characters you rescue along the way.